


Somnambulant

by dining_alone



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Experiments, I have no idea how sleepwalking works, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Sleepwalking, Somnophilia, manipulative!sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-21
Updated: 2013-06-21
Packaged: 2017-12-15 16:59:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/851874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dining_alone/pseuds/dining_alone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So what you’re saying is that you want me to babysit you while you sleepwalk.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somnambulant

When John returned to Sherlock’s hospital room with a cup of coffee, he found the detective sitting upright in bed, texting furiously.

“Are you—” John began.

“Fine,” said Sherlock, without taking his eyes off his phone.

Sherlock seemed more awake than he had any right to be. Just eight hours ago, the man had been lying on the pavement with a syringe sticking out of his neck. The doctors hadn’t expected him to regain consciousness until midday at the earliest.

As though he were reading John’s thoughts (and sometimes John suspected he could), Sherlock glanced up and said, “Really, John, with my… _personal history_ , it would take much more than a double dose of medium-grade benzodiazepine to render me unconscious for any length of time.”

John sighed and sank into the chair next to Sherlock’s bed. He fought down the urge to take his friend’s pulse. “Have you spoken with the doctors yet?”

“Mmm. Yes. Several milliliters of an experimental sleep aid. Development of the drug stopped when researchers discovered a few prohibitively unpleasant side effects.”

John privately decided that this was the last time they would take on a case involving a rogue pharmacist. “What sort of side effects?”

“Amnesia, mild auditory hallucinations, and sleepwalking,” said Sherlock, clearly bored by the conversation.

“Hearing any voices, then?” John hoped the flippant tone of voice disguised his real concern.

Sherlock offered him a rare smile. “Only yours.”

 

 

Four hours later, John was slumped against the wall in Baker Street, massaging his temples. “So what you’re saying is that you want me to babysit you while you sleepwalk.”

“Obviously,” said Sherlock, his voice muffled by the couch cushions. “I’m running important experiments at the moment, and I can’t risk damaging their integrity. It’s your job to keep me away from them.”

“Or, you know, stop you from hurting yourself.”

Sherlock waved a dismissive hand. “If you like. I’ll also need you to take detailed notes on my behaviour while I’m unconscious. Or better still, keep a video record.”

“You want me to film you? Why on earth would you want me to do that?”

Sherlock rolled over on the couch to face John, his hair sticking up wildly and his dressing gown falling off one shoulder. “Data, John. Sleepwalking has played an important role in a number of fascinating homicide cases.”

“Oh no. You’re not planning to kill anyone, are you?”

“Not at the moment. And if I try, it’s your job to stop me.”

“God help me,” muttered John, suddenly feeling the need to escape the flat and grab a nice, cold pint.

“You’ll have to sleep on the sofa for the next few weeks!” Sherlock yelled at his retreating back.

John made a point of not responding.

 

 

The couch was not the least bit kind to John’s injured shoulder, and for the first few nights, it took him a long while to fall asleep. Initially he considered telling Sherlock to sod off; there was no way he was putting up with this level of discomfort for the sake of preserving his flatmate’s mould cultures. But then he pictured Sherlock wandering around their flat semi-conscious with a blowtorch, and he decided that it was in the best interest of all parties involved if he kept watch.

On the fourth night of his vigil, John woke to the sound of Sherlock’s door creaking open. There his flatmate stood, in all his lanky glory. He could have been awake if not for the droop to his posture and the unfocused expression on his face. When Sherlock reached down to scratch his crotch, John had to stifle a laugh. That was something the man would never be caught dead doing while awake. Belatedly, John remembered he was supposed to be filming all this. He retrieved the camcorder from the coffee table and pressed the “record” button.

For a moment, Sherlock just stood there, swaying slightly. Then, as though imbued with a sudden sense of purpose, he strode into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. John expected him to go for the body parts in the vegetable crisper, but instead Sherlock pulled out a package of bread and a jar of blackberry jam. John watched as the detective proceeded to make himself two pieces of toast. Once he wolfed down those two, he made another pair. And another. And another. By his eighth piece of toast, John was shaking with suppressed laughter, causing the camcorder to quiver in his grip. He already relished the thought of showing the footage to Sherlock in the morning.

 

 

“Anything last night?” said Sherlock the next morning, swirling into the kitchen in his dressing gown.

 John grinned and held out the camcorder. “See for yourself.”

As he watched the video, Sherlock’s brow furrowed until he was practically glaring. He thrust the camera back to John.

“All I did was eat toast? Why didn’t you stop me?”

John found his flatmate’s indignation more than a little amusing. “Because you probably needed the calories, you skinny clot. Besides, it’s dangerous to wake a sleepwalker,” he added.

“John, you’re a doctor. You know perfectly well that’s a myth.”

“Well I do now, at any rate.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Next time, feel free to wake me if I’m doing anything _boring_ ,” he said, and he stormed off to his room.

 

 

Several days passed before Sherlock’s next sleepwalking incident, and this time, John was ready with the camcorder in hand. Instead of going for the kitchen, Sherlock began to head downstairs, taking the steps at a much slower pace than he normally did. John prayed he wouldn’t try to leave the flat; he didn’t much like the idea of having to stop the detective from walking out into oncoming traffic. But Sherlock came to a halt in front of Mrs. Hudson’s door and knocked politely. When Mrs. Hudson failed to appear, he knocked again with more urgency. The door to 221A opened.

“Sherlock, it’s one o’clock in the morning! You’ve really got to stop doing this,” said Mrs. Hudson, drawing her dressing gown around her shoulders. “And you, John, you shouldn’t be encouraging him. Is that a camera you have there?”

Not wanting to wake Sherlock up, John pointed at his flatmate and mouthed “sleepwalking experiment.”

Mrs. Hudson shook her head. “Speak up, dear. You know I can’t hear you when you mumble like that.”

Sherlock spoke before John had the chance. “I need to sleep here tonight,” he said. His voice was even lower than usual, but less controlled—there was almost a vulnerable quality to it.

“Why? What’s wrong with your flat? I swear, Sherlock, if you broke the fume hood again—”

“It’s not safe in the flat. For me or for John.”

Sherlock’s tone was deadly serious, and John felt a flicker of nervousness in his stomach. Mrs. Hudson must have picked up on the shift in his expression. “What is it?” she demanded. “What’s happened?”

John decided it was time to explain. “I’m so sorry about all this, Mrs. Hudson. Sherlock was dosed with an experimental drug a few days ago, and sleepwalking is one of the side effects. He doesn’t know what he’s saying right now.”

Sherlock whirled to face John, almost losing his balance in the process. It was bizarre to watch the man move without his usual grace. John would have found it funny if he weren’t concerned for his friend’s wellbeing.

“John, you need to help me look for the bug,” said Sherlock.

“What?”

“They’ve put a recording device in our flat, I’m sure of it. Possibly more than one. They must have broken in at some point.”

“Sherlock, who’s ‘they’?”

But the detective chose that moment to sprint back up the stairs. John could only follow along in his wake, yelling a hasty apology to Mrs. Hudson over his shoulder.

John spent the next hour wearily trailing Sherlock with the camcorder as his flatmate searched the sitting room and kitchen for hidden microphones. Sherlock did actually come across one stuffed between the couch cushions, but after examining it, he tossed it to the side and muttered “Mycroft.” He continued his ransacking until John collapsed on the couch, too exhausted to follow him anymore.

Without meaning to, John slipped into a doze. When he opened his eyes, sunlight was pouring into the room and Sherlock was sat across from him, frowning at the camcorder in his lap.

“I have a theory,” said the detective without preamble.

“Good for you.” John closed his eyes. Whatever this conversation might entail, John didn’t want to have it so soon after waking up.

“I believe that the emotions and desires I subdue in my waking moments come to express themselves when I enter into the somnambulant state.”

It took John a moment to process this. “That explains the eight pieces of toast. We’re out of bread now, by the way.”

Sherlock seemed not to hear him. “Last night I displayed all the hallmarks of someone experiencing a severe paranoid delusion.”

“But you weren’t entirely delusional. After all, you found that bug.”

Sherlock snorted. “Mycroft’s. He rigged the whole flat before we moved in. It was only a matter of time before he planted another.”

Having known the Holmes brothers for several years now, John didn’t find this bit of news particularly surprising or disturbing.

“So who else would be spying on us?”

Sherlock didn’t answer, but his lips tightened.

“Sherlock,” said John quietly, “Moriarty is dead. His entire network is destroyed.”

“I know that,” Sherlock snapped. “Don’t you think—after everything I did—I would know that?”

 The man looked like he was ready to fling himself out of the chair. His fingers drummed a rapid tattoo on the armrests.

John felt a rare stab of pity for his friend. “You stay there, all right?” he said, getting to his feet. “I’m going to fix us some breakfast.”

He could feel Sherlock’s gaze on him as he made his way into the kitchen.

 

 

John woke up fully dressed and slumped on the sofa. He dimly realized that he must have drifted off in front of the television. But now the flat was quiet and dark, and there was a warm weight settled next to him.

It was Sherlock, of course. The slack, unfocused expression on his face told John that his flatmate was sleepwalking again.

John was a little surprised that Sherlock managed to sneak up on him like this. The man wasn’t exactly graceful in his present state, and John was a light sleeper after years in the army. He rolled his eyes and decided that after this, he was going to get Sherlock treated for the sleepwalking. The experiment had gone on long enough. For now, though, he hit the “record” button on the camcorder and set it on the coffee table, facing Sherlock.

“Well? What’s it going to be this time?”

“I missed you, John,” said Sherlock.

His voice contained the same mixture of seriousness and vulnerability that John remembered from the night before. It was odd hearing Sherlock express anything approaching _sentiment_ , but John supposed it fit with the detective’s theory about subdued emotions.

“You were the one who went dashing out of the flat without me today.”

“It had to happen that way. I did it to protect you.”

John shifted where he sat, uncomfortably aware that he and Sherlock were talking about two very different things. They had already gone through a prolonged, unpleasant version of this conversation when Sherlock returned almost half a year ago, and John had no desire to repeat the experience. He kept his mouth shut.

“I thought about you all the time. Dreamed about you.”

“That’s, er, nice,” said John.

And just like that, Sherlock was straddling his lap.

“What are you—”

But his speech centres short-circuited when Sherlock pressed his lips to the hinge of John’s jaw, just below his ear.

“There’s no need to speak,” murmured the detective.

John tried to ignore the way his body was reacting to Sherlock’s warm pressure on top of him. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about this before—those lips on his neck, a pale hand between his legs— but in his fantasies, Sherlock was always conscious and one hundred percent aware of what he was doing.

“Sherlock, stop.”

Sherlock’s only response was to shift back and trail two fingers up the length of the bulge in the doctor’s jeans. John let out an involuntary gasp.

“Hush,” said Sherlock, flicking open the trouser button and undoing the zip. “You want this as much as I do.”

John was hard-pressed to disagree. He knew he should be shoving his flatmate away or at least trying to dissuade him. But having Sherlock’s hand down his pants dispelled any hope of rational thought. John hadn’t tossed off for the duration of the sleepwalking experiment, and a certain part of his anatomy was very interested in this new attention.

Sherlock, with unexpectedly clever fingers, thumbed and rubbed the head of his cock until John was leaking precome. Then he smeared the excess lubrication down the shaft and switched to long, tight, strokes that had John thrusting up into his hand.

 _This is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong._ John’s hips moved to the desperate mantra of his thoughts. Sherlock didn’t know what he was doing. He was technically unconscious. He couldn’t give meaningful consent.

But some part of him must want this, or he wouldn’t be here at all. Some part of him must have dreamed about this when he was all alone, halfway across the world. John imagined Sherlock waking up in some vile little bedsit, hard and aching—so hard that he couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t delete it. He would have to take himself in hand and think of John.

That mental image sent John over the edge.

“Oh, fuck. Oh, _fuck,_ ” he groaned as his orgasm washed over him. He was so far gone he barely felt the semen begin to seep into his shirt. When he came to his senses, Sherlock was still straddling him, thrusting into his own hand. The man’s eyes were screwed shut, the colour high in his cheeks, and his right hand was slick with John’s come. With a sharp intake of breath, he released all over John’s chest and stomach.

“Sherlock,” John began, once the other man’s breathing had slowed.

Sherlock silenced him by bringing their mouths together for a short, sedate kiss. Then he rolled off John’s lap and curled up at the far end of the sofa.

For a moment, John found himself too dazed to move. That was the hardest he’d come in a decade, he was sure. He glanced over at his flatmate, whose chest was now rising and falling slowly in the unmistakable rhythm of sleep. It seemed wrong to wake him.

Suddenly remembering the mess they’d made, John stripped off his soiled shirt and got up to throw it in the laundry. The guilt and self-questioning could wait until they were both cleaned up, at least. He wiped Sherlock’s hands carefully with a damp rag, praying that his flatmate didn’t regain full consciousness. John didn’t think he was ready to explain what had happened quite yet.

When he was finished, John collapsed back onto the sofa and stared unseeingly into the darkness of the sitting room. Until a small, red light caught his attention.

It was the light on the camcorder. Of course the thing was still on.

John picked it up and pressed the “stop” button, then navigated back to the main menu. A thumbnail of the most recent video hovered at the top right corner of the screen. John hesitated before pressing play.

The footage was dark. John couldn’t see his own face or Sherlock’s—just two indistinct forms on the sofa. He watched Sherlock sit on his lap, watched him lean down to kiss John’s neck. In spite of the poor lighting, it was easy to tell when Sherlock found his prick, because John let out an embarrassing choking noise he didn’t remember making at all.  The resultant activity lasted only a few minutes (again, embarrassing) before John swore as he came.

Sherlock sounded much better in the throes. His little huffs of breath were rhythmic, almost musical, and John felt his cock give a tiny stir of interest at the noise. He stopped the video when Sherlock came, already half-hard.

For a moment he gazed at the hunched shape of his flatmate at the other end of the couch. Then he got up, grabbed the camera, and took the stairs two at a time. In the alleyway next to their flat, he removed the memory card from the camcorder and stomped on it until it was nothing more than a mess of plastic on the pavement. He threw the pieces into a nearby bin, wondering what he was going to tell Sherlock in the morning.

 

 

Predictably, John barely slept at all that night. When he left around noon for his shift at the surgery, Sherlock was no longer on the sofa. His bedroom door was shut, and John couldn’t hear any movement from inside.

Thoughts of the night before consumed him during his idle moments at work. He tried to come to a final decision—should he tell his flatmate what happened or not? And if he spoke up, how much should he reveal? How would Sherlock react to the information? John didn’t want to do anything to risk their friendship, fragile as it was after Sherlock’s deception.

And Sherlock _had_ deceived him. The man spent two years maintaining the illusion of his death, leaving John to obsess over what he could have done to prevent his friend’s suicide. Lying about a quick handjob paled in comparison. Besides, there was always the possibility that Sherlock would take one look at John and deduce what had transpired between them. If the detective couldn’t figure it out on his own, John wasn’t going to tell him.

Having made his choice, John picked up takeaway after his shift. He was in the process of wolfing down a box of Szechuan chicken when Sherlock appeared in their sitting room, still wearing his t-shirt and dressing gown from the night before.

“Where were you all day?” he asked, a note of petulant accusation in his voice.

“At the surgery. Some of us work regular hours.” John gestured to the boxes of takeaway on the table. “You should eat something.”

Sherlock seemed to consider the food, then turned on his heel and made for the kitchen.

“I’ve decided to discontinue the sleepwalking experiment,” he said.

“Oh?” John tried to keep his voice level.

“Yes. I’ve gleaned every bit of useful data from the exercise. And in any case, the side effects of the drug will wear off soon.”

“As long as I don’t have to sleep on the sofa anymore,” said John, relieved.

He reached for his laptop, intending to draft a blog post about the sleepwalking experiment (omitting, of course, last night’s incident). He was surprised to find an email from Mycroft Holmes waiting for him.

_John,_

_It has come to my attention that my brother was recently dosed with an experimental benzodiazepine. I took the liberty of researching the drug, and I came across an article that might interest you as a doctor and as Sherlock’s primary caretaker._

_MH_

_P.S. I feel I must remind you that my brother is an excellent actor when he needs to be._

John stared at the cryptic post-script and then opened the attachment. The article detailed the drug’s clinical trials as well as the side effects of long-term use. As John continued to read, one thing became abundantly clear: none of the patients showed any sign of sleepwalking until they had been using the drug for several months. It wasn’t a side effect of short-term use.

John closed his laptop and glanced over to where Sherlock lay on the couch. The man was curled up at one end, just like the night before. He wasn’t looking at John, but his grin was unmistakable.

John felt an answering smile creep across his own face. He got to his feet. 

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta'd, not britpicked.
> 
> I know nothing about drugs or sleepwalking! Please feel free to correct me in the comments.


End file.
